Jira Add-Ons - AWS Hosted

In the Atlassian documentation it states in the cloud hosted environment some add-ons are not supported. Would this also be true if we were to use another hosting service, such as Amazon? I would assume this is because in the Atlassian cloud hosted environment they do not wan't add-ons that require elevated privileges to access the backend.

3 answers

The software Atlassian uses to provide JIRA and Confluence as a SAAS application had to be implemented in a way that while still providing a method for enhancing the applications restricted what those enhancements could do. They did this via a combination technical things that I don't fully grok or understand well enough to elucidate upon much beyond where they will work.

While the Atlassian Cloud architecture does allow for type 2 plugins to be run (in the cloud application) these type 2 plugins represent a great deal of time and effort for Atlassian to support and validate every time there is another release for the Cloud. A very small number of select plugin vendors were asked to participate in the initial cloud offering with their type-2 plugins and those were the only plugins/addons available for Atlassian Cloud instances until the advent of Atlassian Connect which introduced type 3 Plugins and the marketing name change from Plugin to Addon.

Type 3 plugins are a very interesting solution to this problem and solve it primarily by 1) using advanced java programming techniques and 2) limiting the available API between the addon and the atlassian product. This is done by not hosting the addon on the same server as the Atlassian Application - type 3 plugins are hosted on an external server, and any data they display is data that has to be transported from the JIRA server through the externally hosted addon server and then back to the JIRA server or just straight to the client browser for display.

There - more accurate and so on, a little history - I think most of it is accurate but I might be missing a point here or there that someone can correct.

The big thing is that Atlassian Addons can be of type 2 and run directly in the Atlassian Cloud application, but third part, i.e. most all marketplace vendor addons, cannot as a type 2 addon. They must first be converted to a type 3 addon and an external hosting vendor engaged to host the addon prior to becoming available for use on atlassian cloud.

All I have to add to that is that at the last Altas-camp last week, Atlassian made it clear Connect addons are what they are concentrating on.
There's little to be added to the support for version 2 addons - they're not going away any time soon (as a lot of the core is written in them and they allow direct access to the full API), but they're not going to see any huge investment beyond keeping their framework working for what they do now.
(As an aside, I suspect that means we'll see "Connect" added to Server versions sooner rather than later, but I'm just speculating now)

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Atlassian Server versions allow you to install any type 2 addon you want. Assuming you have full admin rights on it.

If you install on a hosted environment such as AWS, you will be running server versions, so you can help youself to type 2 addons, but not Connect ones (although that support is coming, as Atlassian are concentrating heavily on Connect over type 2)

@Nic Brough [Adaptavist] - True, Atlassian can allow any type 2 addon to run on Atlassian Cloud - however, to the best of my knowledge they aren't doing this any longer. So to keep things simple I said that if Atlassian hosts the app then only type 3 plugins are allowed, which while not being 'absolutely true' is true enough for the guy asking the question who was smart enough to mention something about why type 2 plugins probably weren't allowed, which was accurate.

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That's still not right, type 2 addons are still running on Cloud. Agile is a type 2 addon for example. They are unlikely to add any more to the list of ones they will accept, unless there's some compelling reason to do so.
Your (edited) answer went on to imply that the user would run Jira Cloud on AWS, and hence only have Connect addons usable, but I think that was just the way it was phrased and I was trying to clarify. I'm sure you meant to say that they'd have access to type 2 only (and you didn't mention Connect for server, which isn't available yet)

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@Nic Brough [Adaptavist] - yep, my answer was too fast and a little sloppy - thanks for the clarification. What's strange is that I didn't edit my answer....but now I will as it's totally without much value

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I do those a lot, and edit. All comments are welcome, especially when I'm wrong! It's usually versions of Jira/Confleunce/Agile that catch me out.
Your last edit is great, it should be one of the FAQs that I'd like to see added to "Answers" so that we don't have to keep saying the same thing!

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